Bayou Diversity 2/6/2012 - Eagle Shootings

As a boy growing up in the outdoors of north Louisiana I never once got a glimpse of our national bird in the wild.

There were almost none to see.

Continental populations of bald eagles had been decimated by the pesticide DDT, when leaching into the food web it resulted in egg shells too thin to support the embryos inside.

In Louisiana the few surviving birds nested in remote swamps along the coast.